This invention relates to an equipment for the volume-reducing treatment of a radioactive waste and more particularly, to an equipment for the volume-reducing treatment of a radioactive waste which dries and mills the radioactive waste and then pelletizes the radioactive powder.
Radioactive wastes generated from an atomic power plant include a concentrated waste liquor formed by subjecting the radioactive waste liquid to the evaporation/concentration treatment, used ion exchange resins from purification equipments for the reactor water and the condensation, and so forth. These wastes are packed in a drum and stored in a site of the plant. However, as the number of operating years of the plant increases, the storage space increases as much. Hence, developments of equipments for the volume-reducing treatment of the radioactive wastes have been made.
Among them, there is an equipment for the volume-reducing treatment developed by the inventors of the present invention (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 34200/1977). This equipment first dries and mills the radioactive waste and then press-molds the powder into pellets in order to handle and store the waste as the pellets. This equipment is extremely effective for reducing the volume of the radioactive waste.
However, since the conventional press-molding machines have primarily been developed for use in the fields of pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, agricultural chemicals, catalysts and the like, their performance is not entirely satisfactory when used for an equipment for the volume-reducing treatment of the radioactive waste.